End of an Era: Yesterday’s Joy Became Today’s Inconvenience

James Schembari with his 1974 Jensen-Healey during a road trip in the autumn of 1981.Credit
Christine Negroni

It should be hard to say goodbye to a car that you’ve owned for almost 40 years, but that was not the case with my classic. My recently departed car was a 1974 Jensen-Healey. I’m sure you understand.

A beautiful roadster built during the height of British manufacturing ineptitude, the cars have a horrible reputation for mechanical breakdowns, rust problems and haunted Lucas electronics. I carried a fire extinguisher in the car, as did many of the other owners I met at Jensen gatherings. Word spreads fast.

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James Schembari when both he and the roadster were much younger.Credit
Courtesy of James Schembari

I also had a crescent wrench in the trunk, not to tighten loose bolts, but to whack the fuel pump back to life when it stopped working. I kept a screwdriver in the center console to put the window cranks back on when they fell off and carried spare switches for the lights and heater when the cheap plastic ones broke. Thankfully, the car is so light that it’s easily pushed. I once enlisted a group of boys playing baseball in the street to push me home after the fuel pump didn’t respond to the wrench two blocks from home.

Still, the car brought me much pleasure. I bought it in 1974 in Connecticut for $7,000 after I was discharged from the Navy, much to the disappointment of my wise father, who thought I should have saved the money for my post-Navy life. I loved the way the car looked, with its long hood and Spitfire-like rear end. Its aluminum 4-valve-per-cylinder Lotus 4-cylinder engine was groundbreaking, and its advertised sub-8-second 0-to-60 m.p.h. time was quick in those days. The car was a joy to drive.

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In the years after Mr. Schembari fell in love with his wife, Christine, in the Jensen-Healey, they filled it with sons.Credit
James Schembari

I lived my life in that car. I brought it to college, drove across the country to visit old Navy pals and dated my wife, Christine, in it. We went on a foliage trip around Connecticut shortly after we met, and with Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” playing on the tape deck, we had a romantic outing marveling at the changing leaves. I think I fell in love with her that day. When we relocated to Chicago after the wedding, she went out first in the Jensen, calling home to brag about all the guys who gave her and the car double-takes.

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Sam Schembari, the author's gearhead son, poses by the Jensen-Healey on his prom night.Credit
James Schembari

I had it restored in the late ‘80s, but as children and minivans took over my life in the ‘90s, I scarcely drove the car. I eventually gave it to my gearhead teenage son, Sam, who brought it to the prom. But he soon tired of the constant maintenance it required and gave it back. Eventually, it stopped running altogether, and Christine, obviously forgetting how good she had looked in the car years earlier, told me it was blocking her view of the garden and begged me to get rid of it.

So we placed an ad on Craigslist last week, and it, and all the memories the car represented, were suddenly gone the next day, sold to a man who promised to restore it.

“She is in good hands,” he wrote in an email, mentioning that the car was leaking gas from several places. “She needs a lot of work. I think if you waited too much longer it would have been the end of her.”

Then he signed off, “Thank you. I love her too.”

I have replaced my old friend with a 2006 BMW M3 convertible, swapping English engineering for German precision. I will now be forming new memories, none of which I assume will involve hitting the fuel pump with a wrench.